About this item
Award-winning journalist Thanassis Cambanis tells the wonderfully readable and insightful Booklist, starred review inside story of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Cambanis brings to life the noble dreamers who brought Egypt to the brink of freedom, and the dark powerful forces thatfor the time beingstopped them short. But he also tells a universal story of inspirational people willing to transform themselves in order to transform their society. He focuses on two pivotal leaders One is Basem, an apolitical middle-class architect who puts his entire family in danger when he seizes the chance to improve his country. The other is Moaz, a contrarian Muslim Brother who defies his own organization to join the opposition. These revolutionaries had little more than their idealism with which to battle the secret police, the old oligarchs, and a power-hungry military determined to keep control.
About the Author
Thanassis Cambanis is a journalist who has been writing about the Middle East for more than a decade. His latest book chronicles the idealistic and ultimately failed efforts of Egyptian revolutionaries to build a democratic order after Mubarak. His first book, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, was published in 2010. He writes "The Internationalist" column for The Boston Globe Ideas section, and regularly contributes to The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Globe (where he served as a foreign correspondent in Iraq and the Middle East) , and other publications. He is a fellow at The Century Foundation in New York City. Thanassis studied international affairs for a master's degree at Princeton University, and did his undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon with his wife Anne Barnard, a reporter for The New York Times, and their two children.
